


My Name is Sea

by cartographicalspine



Series: The Hearthkeeper [6]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Angst, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Multiple Origins, Multiple Wardens (Dragon Age), Sea-longing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-17
Updated: 2018-09-17
Packaged: 2019-07-13 09:22:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16014995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cartographicalspine/pseuds/cartographicalspine
Summary: Cousland has been drifting for a long while, through Ostagar, through forests and demons and darkspawn. Now the team sets their sights to the northbound towards Denerim, and while they cannot bring Highever back, Mahariel thinks he might still find a way to guide him home.





	My Name is Sea

**Author's Note:**

> Finlay "Finn" Cousland and Mahariel are the main characters in this story, though all the possible origins survived and are mentioned at least in name here. I'm unsure if there will be more chapters focusing on Finn interacting with each of the others, but the tags will be updated as necessary if this gets a continuation.

He’s supposed to get used to all the walking, eventually.

Oh, he knows the weariness of a day-long hunting trip and the aches and complaints of a courtier’s duties. How Fergus had teased his little brother _Finlay’s_ softness and his insatiable search for comforts... _oh_. Finn remembers snapping at him, cutting the conversation short, and spending the the rest of his evening listening to interest politics when he really should have spent it listening to his brother talk about the forests he’d traveled. He finds himself thinking often about what he should have done with his time.

But hunting trips and days at court are not the fever-throb exhaustion of a fugitive’s journey, this endless cross-country trek with only a nebulous goal somewhere on the horizon. A hazy dream of an end.

No, he’s not used to it, though he should be. As he should get used to walking alongside a pair of good horses instead of astride them, to travelling with a merchant’s cart instead of receiving their deliveries in his home, to dreaming about his days in Highever instead of living them. He misses his horse. He misses the wonder of the travelling caravan’s stock. He misses the salty tang of the air by the…

…by the…

“—and then we can... hey, _hey_. Finn! Yoo-hoo, up here!”

Mahariel is waving at him, an ecstatic furl of energy and brightness, but when is he not? He’s atop a green, sprouting tangle of branches at the turn of the road, though it’s more a sapling that has ferociously and spontaneously thickened than a fully mature tree. He has that effect on the world around him.

True to form, his grin blossoms its twin on Finn’s face, and so he lets himself be spurred onward by the sunny, sometimes lilting tone in Mahariel’s voice. He reaches the tree in time for Mahariel to drop in front of him, feline and soundless, only to find his hands hostage in one very enthusiastic grip.

“Mahariel, what on earth—?” Finn doesn’t get the rest of his question out, partly because Mahariel’s pace is haphazard and yet incredibly deliberate in a way that has him wondering whether their next step will be the one to topple them over.

The other part stirs beloved memories in his chest, and he cannot find their pace anything but slow in comparison to the whirlwind of his thoughts. He’s already half-yearning for what lies beyond the bend. A part of him _knows_.

Mahariel’s eyes are solely on him as they stop on the hilltop, just at the corner of the dirt path, and Finn wishes he could smile back. But he can’t turn his head or move his body, not when the first breeze off the coast hits him. Salt and brine and air together, a cool and deep breath from the ocean. It smells of blue and green, of the tide heading out, and of the day’s haul coming in with the fishermen from some nearby village. If he squints, he might imagine he can see the faint form of it in the distance, small and squat.

Next to him, Mahariel squeezes his free hand, because his other hand is clamped over his mouth like it might hold back his wrenching, homesick sobs. He misses Castle Cousland, he misses the cliffs of Highever, he misses his family.

_Finlay, can you see it from here? Little brother, look!_

But here, watching white-capped waves break on the rocky shore through the saltwater spilling down his cheeks and trembling fingers, the missing hurts a little less.

***

“How did you find this place?”

Finn’s voice is gravel and moss after all his tears, try as he might to clear his throat. Mahariel comments on neither and instead keeps their hands linked as they pick their way down the cliffside. Some places they find a crumbling path; in others the rock and earth has all but given away to the elements, and they separate in order to scale down a short distance or two. It’s slow going and precarious.

There’s a little hum before Mahariel’s answer, and then he says, “I feel like it was you who found it.”

“Me?” Finn cannot keep the surprise out of his voice, or from his expression. “How did I…?”

Mahariel grins wider, a gleam of scattered sunlight in his eyes. “I just remembered what you said the sea smells like and chased it for a few days. I really am sorry about dragging us off course.”

Aeducan is certainly sorry, too. She’s more than sorry, but Finn won’t remind Mahariel of that blistering lecture right now. He can’t bring himself to be very sorry about it either, not with the last stretch to the shore at his feet.

_Just follow it back every time. You're a Cousland, my dear boy; you know how._

He and Mahariel race each other to the bottom and take a good, hard tumble the rest of the way to the beach. The dogs take this as their cue to charge forward too, their screaming barks filling the air in their excitement.

But the ocean waves roar even louder above them all.

***

They’re taking a winding path down a little strip of sand, which is the only real “beach” for miles and miles, but it’s sheltered by a jutting slab of rocky headlands and therefore fairly sedate. Not that they’re in any rush to return to the freezing cold waters anytime soon; Mahariel is still shivering beneath his long, soaking mass of hair and seaweed, complimentary of the ocean.

He peels another strand away delicately and winces when it catches in tangles and knots, and Finn smiles with reddened eyes and cheeks at all his fussing. Mahariel flings it at him with no real ill will, letting it fall halfway between them in the sand.

The others are trailing down the narrow footpath along the cliffs, stopping often to look out across the water like they could just drown in all that blue. Finn knows he certainly could. Aeducan and Brosca know they _would_. Besides Morrigan and Sten, they are the ones nearest the high ground, reluctant trespassers to a world they’ve never known. Tabris just watches pensively, while Amell tugs Alistair and Leliana onward, a furious, excited energy in her lanky frame. There’s something small and solitary about Surana here, but he neither leads nor follows the rest of the group down; he just moves on his own toward shore and sand.  

Bern and Woof chase gulls and waves alike, howling at the chilly bite of the surf as it crashes into them again and again, but unlike Mahariel they don’t seem ready to accept their lesson quite yet.

As for the boy himself, he eyes them with a mixture of something like sympathy and envy as he tries to wring out as much seawater as he can from his hair and tunic. “They might catch cold,” he sniffles between shudders, “or fever or aches. Can mabari even swim?”

Finn rubs at his stinging, aching eyes, wondering if it’s sand or salt that irritates him right now. Never mind the sting; the cresting waves are beautiful at this hour. “Bern learned to swim with me, though Woof could learn, if he hasn’t.”

Mahariel brightens like the sun coming out from behind a gray cloud. He does that often, too. “Do you think we could teach him now?”

He forgets his complaining and grousing as soon as Finn leads him back down to the edge of the shore, the dogs bounding along beside them. They lead each other down with light steps and light hearts like the light as it shines on the sea, and to Finn it feels almost—

_Don't be afraid, pup, not as long as you have the road back._

— almost like a call home.


End file.
